


The Tower of Song

by xenoglossy



Category: Tower of Song - Leonard Cohen (Song)
Genre: Dystopia, Fantasy, Gen, Music, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-24
Updated: 2013-09-24
Packaged: 2017-12-27 12:17:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/978752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xenoglossy/pseuds/xenoglossy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time my mother caught me singing, she slapped me across the face. Then, as I stood there shocked and stinging, she grabbed my shoulder and looked me straight in the eyes and said, "Don't you ever, ever do that again." </p><p>She caught me at it again eventually, right about when I'd just turned ten. This time she just gave me a long, silent look, with her lips pressed together into a hard, bloodless line, and then at last she said if I kept doing this, the Angels were going to come and take me away and there would be nothing she could do to stop them. "Nothing," she said. "Do you understand me?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Tower of Song

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Deepdarkwaters](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deepdarkwaters/gifts).



> With all due apologies to Leonard Cohen, whose point I have completely (albeit intentionally) missed because I wanted to write about a weird dystopia where people are actually locked up in towers and forced to sing.

I was ten years old when the Angels came for me.

It was my own fault, really. I had been warned.

The first time my mother caught me singing, she slapped me across the face. Then, as I stood there shocked and stinging, she grabbed my shoulder and looked me straight in the eyes and said, "Don't you ever, _ever_ do that again." There was a strange, strangled quality to her voice, something which I had never heard when she was scolding me for not drinking my milk or tearing my only shirt.

I didn't know what it was then, but it scared me a little all the same, so I stopped—for a while. But it didn't last long. I found myself singing whenever I wasn't really thinking about it, when my hands were busy and my mind wasn't. I'd hum to myself while I was making the beds or washing the dishes. I wasn't disobeying her on purpose—it was a reflex, an instinct. But you know how it is, don’t you? If you didn't, you wouldn't be here. 

It wasn’t long before I noticed that when I sang, things happened. The blanket I'd been about to put on the bed would leap out of my hands and fling itself across the room. The water in the sink would surge like a tidal wave and come crashing down all over me and the kitchen counter. It was nothing I could predict, much less control. You might think that would've stopped me doing it, but no, I always had more curiosity than sense. Though I did try to keep from doing it when my mother was around, at least.

She caught me at it again eventually, right about when I'd just turned ten. This time she just gave me a long, silent look, with her lips pressed together into a hard, bloodless line, and then at last she said if I kept doing this, the Angels were going to come and take me away and there would be nothing she could do to stop them. "Nothing," she said. "Do you understand me?"

And I said "Yeah, Mom, of course," but I was just at the age to be a little skeptical, a little rebellious, and the Angels who came and took away children and enslaved them in some distant tower seemed about as real as the monster under the bed lying in wait for children who didn't clean up their messes, you know? They'd never taken anyone I knew, anyway.

It wasn't long after that that they showed up at our door, polite and impassive in their uniforms. They handed my mother an official-looking piece of paper, and my mother turned away from me to read it. When she was finished, she turned back and handed the paper back to them without a word. She didn't say anything to me, either. She just laid her hand on my head for a moment and then let it fall to her side. And that was the last I ever saw of her before they led me away.

That's how I remember it, at least. It's been so long and I've played the memory over so many times in my head, who knows how it really went. But what does it matter anymore? My mother must be long dead by now, and if any of the Angels who were there that day are still alive, I doubt they remember me in particular. I wasn't the only child they took that day.

I don't suppose I need to tell you what it was like, my first days here, getting used to the way my life was now. Out there, things may have changed between your time and mine, but in here? In any tower, really? Ten years ago, twenty, thirty, a hundred—it makes no difference.

And what is there to say, anyway? I sang, that's all. Hours and hours a day chained down in the room with the big machines turning our voices into power for millions of other machines and money for the Angels. I sang and I sang until it was my shift to sleep, and then I lay in my bed, my throat hoarse and aching, and listened to the others in their beds coughing or crying or tossing and turning. And always the distant sound of people singing to the machines.

You know, it took me a long time to realize what they'd done to me—the worst thing, I mean. I was so busy mourning the loss of my family and my ordinary life and all the thousands of small things that went along with that, I didn't even notice. About the music, I mean. I used to love it, you know, before I came here. Somehow, in some way, I still do. I love it even though they've destroyed it. Or it's destroyed me. Or both.

It took me even longer to think of trying to escape. Oh, when I lay on my narrow cot in the dark at the end of my singing shift I dreamed all the time about going home, or at least of getting out and going _somewhere_ , but I didn't even begin to think of making plans. It was too big, too intimidating, too impossible. But then.... Well, there was this window, you see, this tiny, barred window near my cot. And in the evening when they'd let me stop singing to the machine and go back to my room, almost every day, I used to see this woman passing by the window. On her way home from the factory where she worked, I found out later. And I fell in love with her, a little, or at least the idea of her. Because she was out there; because she was free. 

I could write a little—not a lot, since of course I hadn't had to do anything like that since I came to the tower, but enough. So I managed to get my hand on a pencil stub and a scrap of paper a guard had dropped, and I wrote her a note.

I don't remember what I said. A bunch of nonsense, probably. But when I saw her coming I slipped it out the window and she picked it up. And when she passed by the next day, she slid a return letter in the window. I was lucky, I guess, to be in a tower that wasn't so well-guarded—they'd never let anyone close enough to do that here.

To this day I don't know if it was pity that made her write me back or if she really wanted to know what I had to say, but one way or another we started writing back and forth all the time. She asked me about what it was like inside the tower—the Angels kept it all pretty quiet, I guess, and all she'd heard was a lot of vague rumors. So I told her everything about how it was, about all the things that happened to me, and she wrote back with sympathy. Sounds kind of pointless, I know, but on the really bad days, when I opened my mouth and no sound came out and the guards kicked me in the ribs for a while as if that would help, it made it all just that little bit more tolerable to know that there was someone I could tell about it. Someone who'd care.

And I'd like to think it went both ways, because once we got to know each other a little, it got to be clear that she wasn't too happy either. She worked with machines too, great big brutal ones that could rip out your hair or chop off a finger if you weren't careful. The hours were long and the pay was low, and the overseer was always screaming at her about one thing or another. We confessed all our troubles to each other, because it's easy to do in letters to someone you only see a few minutes a day through a window. And we got pretty attached to each other, because that's easy to do with the only person who says anything nice to you. And _that's_ when I started to think of getting out.

She said she couldn't help me get out of the tower, but if I could get as far as the town, she would help me. Give me food and clothes and a bit of money to help me on my way. And then I asked, why didn't she come with me? And she had to think about it for a while, but in the end she said she would. She had no family left, she said, and no time for friends. No one would miss her except her boss at the factory, and good riddance to him. So we started planning in earnest. We really thought that all we had to do was get out of our current situations, and then it would all be better.

Well, we were young and stupid then. 

Anyway, I still had to come up with a way to get out of the tower. I spent a few weeks watching for opportunities to slip away, but the guards were watching all the time except when they locked us in for the sleep shift. They didn't pay quite so much attention then, but that left me with the problem of getting out of a locked room. It didn't unlock from the inside, same as the doors here, so even if I could steal the key, it wouldn't do me much good.

Then I remembered before I came here, how things used to move around of their own accord when I sang, and I started to wonder if I could do it on purpose. You can see where this is going, most likely: that's when I figured out the trick I taught you. And if you thought it was hard to learn, well, imagine how it would've been with no one to show you what to do. It took me ages to figure out how to move a specific thing, let alone do anything that fiddly. But I was motivated, so I got it in the end. I told my friend on the outside that I'd found a way out—though I never explained to her exactly what it was—and we set a date for our great escape.

It didn't work out—of course it didn't, or I wouldn't be in here telling you this. No, the guards found out—they'd found the letters, maybe. Hell, maybe they'd found out about them ages ago and they were just winding me up, letting me think I had a chance of escaping before they pounced because it was more fun that way. Well, what does it matter, in the end? Fact is, the day before she and I were supposed to run away together, I was moved to another tower, one with more guards and stronger locks. Not that the locks were much of a problem, as you've seen, and maybe the guards wouldn't have been either if I'd been determined enough. But I had lost my confidence and my only ally, and I told myself I was going to wait a while before I tried again. Bide my time, make better plans. And the years went by, and here I still am.

Oh, I could go now, but there's nothing for me out there. I'm old and I'm broken-down, and this tower's the only world I've known these last forty years. Fifty years? I lose track. No, I don't know what I'd do out there. How I'd live.

But you, you're young. You've got a life ahead of you still. So take what I've taught you and get out of here—as far as you can, as fast as you can. 

Maybe someday, if it all goes well—if you're luckier and braver and smarter than I ever was—you'll come back. Maybe you'll sing open every lock on every door, and all of the people still inside will come out, and you'll all sing until the tower crumbles into dust.

... No, never mind that, I don't know what I was on about. Mind wandering in my old age, it must be. Don't worry about any of that. Don't even think about it. Just... take your music and use it for yourself, for once, and not for them.

Go.


End file.
